Tiny House Renovation: Three Months In (the House is growing!)

10/26/2014 08:54:00 PM

We foolishly thought that by Christmas this year, the tiny house will be done. In our defense, five months is quite a long time to renovate + build a house. But as I was told, building from scratch is easier than adding basically two extra floors to an existing structure, and our current labor set-up (coming up in another post) is not so typical so we've accepted the fact we'll most probably not be done by Christmas. Though that would be a great gift!

But things are moving along, which makes it harder to be patient since we can finally see the structure of the whole house, very near yet so very far...

At this time, they had completed all the formworks for the loft level and had started with pouring concrete. We did the concrete for this level manually instead of using ready-mix since we'll be needing a lot less and can't meet minimum requirement.

Week 12

Tada! Here's where we are at now. Look at this thing looking so much more like a house. After the concrete cured, they started working on metal framing for the roof and walls.

Also, take note that I'm taking these photos from the roof of the main house so what you're seeing are the 3rd and loft level. Which makes this house incredibly narrow and tall (front view). Admittedly, this thing came out taller than what we imagined since we changed the roof design midway, adding two feet ceiling height for the loft. So we'll have 9 ft to 11 ft sloped loft ceiling.

The other day, we toured the inside of the house. I'm absolutely terrified the whole time since we're walking and standing on open beams and seeing two floors down. But I have to suck it up since the workers are doing this day in and day out, plus I really wanna have a feel of how it is "inside."

Here's a shot of the loft level. See how high the ceiling will be? Ecstatic! I'll also put awning windows up there to release heat since this is the highest part of the house. I'm researching passive cooling strategys nowadays.. what happened to me?? haha

Still at the loft looking down. Instead of doing concrete slab floors, we opted for this method-- wood beams flooring for the third and loft level. We wanted the least weight possible for this structure.

Here on the third level. You can see a tiny sliver of the loft beam flooring above. I'm looking at what will be the stairs area. We also reused the old bedroom's aluminum window and placed it here. We will be reusing as much, and purchasing all windows second hand to save on cost! If we didn't, the windows alone would cost us 100k Php or more. Nope.

Also, remember our building strategy? Here it is in the flesh. Concrete post and beams to connect to the existing structure and metal wall cladding for the exterior walls. Here's the steel frame work in which the wall clad will be connected to. (see above and below photo for reference)

And because I felt very proud on touring this skeleton of a house with no flooring, I have to pose for a photo! Should have a proof right? Haha

Next week we'll be adding more steel wall framework when all the (second hand) windows arrived. Also, roof! Next week, we'll finally have a roof. Hopefully in two weeks, we can install the exterior wall so that we can get to work inside. I'm so looking forward to that part.

And just to keep me motivated, I look at these....

Week 4

Week 12

What the what? A house has grown. We've covered the tall trees! And speaking of trees, I'm so happy about all the trees our neighbors have. I'll be having windows on that side to take advantage of the leafy view. We've come a long way, and we still have a long way to go, but I see progress and it makes me happy.

P.S. Showed these photos to my friends, and they told me it looks enormous. Well there's no point of reference here, but it really is not. It's around 7 meters long. If you check out Week 10 photo, you can see a guy on the lower right for proportion reference. Our house is not literally so tiny since we have a lot of levels, but we're basically sitting in 26sqm of land which makes it quite challenging. I'll share with you some REAL tiny houses on another post. Well, those are really impressive!

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HELLO

Hello, this is Elle Uy from Manila Philippines.

Decor Me Happy is a chronicle of my work as a decorator, our life in the "Tiny" house, endless design inspiration, and a place to share my mostly chaotic thoughts about my pursuit of happy homes and the randomness that is called life.

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